This sounds like a solid base plan, good luck. I’m sure you’ll be riding strong next spring!
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I do my SS intervals below 70RPM average. I will go below 60RPM for 5 mins here and there, but mostly try to stay in the 60-70 range. 70RPM is definitely not too low…I find it really helps with muscular endurance. I would work your way down to that, though. Start at 80-85 RPM and step down if you have no pain.
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Um, wow. I’m at 92-94 rpm, up to about 100 rpm when I’m getting fatigued. But I’m very much a beginner and also realize I need a broader “cadence envelope” than what I currently have.
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Forgive me if this has been asked already, but how do you guys incorporate the SS progression workouts into trainerroad!? Is there a way to import or create them or so?
See post from @2fst4u higher up in this thread…
Is there an order in which to do all of the SS sessions each week.
So, what I’ve done, is start with the structure of the TR low volume base plan then modify heavily from there. All in all I’m going to do the SST progression below during an 18 week custom base plan. My basic structure will be two key workouts per week, one of those being a SST workout as listed on Tuesday. The second key workout will be a “long ride” 4 Tips for Long Distance Cycling | 250 Mile Bike Rides | EVOQ.BIKE at 56-76% FTP on Sunday. The third workout will be a Tempo workout at 76-88% FTP but if I feel great I may do another SST instead (Thursday). To fill in the fourth and maybe fifth workouts will be shorter, easy >50% FTP spins depending on recovery and motivation. Overall, this is my own “Frankensteined” masters mid volume base plan totaling 7-9 hours and around 300-450 TSS per week. I respond quickly to sweet spot and three or four sweet spots a week is way too much for me. I’ve found good success with something similar to the above plan in 2020 and managed a 3.6 watt per kg ave, nothing special but I’m able to hang with guys that are stronger by doing structure and focusing on fatigue resistance/longer SST intervals. I’ll do a TR Build cycle after but it will be modified to lessen the intensity. As far as specialty plans go, I may cherry pick a few workouts from rolling road race and put them into the last two weeks of build but no way I can follow a full specialty phase, I tried twice and failed hard each time. So basically I do what coach chad recommends for group riders like me and rotate through base and build throughout the year.
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2x30 today, lots of PRs from 55 minutes to ~1:15
Gonna take a rest week, then not certain what to do next. I was thinking of starting SSB LV II, and following that up with 6 weeks of sweet spot.
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Thinking of doing this type of thing instead of SSB1 (will put SSB1 in the calender then sub in longer SS workouts) as find the intervals just too short in that plan. I know i can currently do 2 x 25 @90% mins without any issue at all so see no benefit in going back to 8-10 min intervals in SSB1.
I do 3 rides a week (plus 2 runs… duathlete!) so thinking 2 sweetspot rides a week, slowly pushing out the interval/total length up to an hour (i focus on sprint duathlons so total race length about an hour and bike element about 30 mins).
Then one other ride a week…maybe another sweetspot, maybe odd V02 (To keep that from forgetting how to work!), maybe a threshold/over unders type workout … Will mix up that 3rrd ride each week.
That’s for 6 weeks of SSB1 … Do people think that long enough to build decent base and push out TTE/miscle endurance?
Plan is then to move onto SSB2 … but on the sweetspot workouts I plan to ignore most of the rest intervals to make the intervals much longer.
What people think of that plan?
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This sounds like a decent way to go and similar to what I’m doing. Throwing in the occasional Vo2 session is good as it “touches up” that system just enough so it doesn’t surprise the legs too much later on during build. You can increase TTE in 6 weeks but 12 weeks or more might be better.
Nice PR’s! Looking forward to hitting that workout in the near future.
Thanks! these long SS sessions are great, I’m gonna do another few weeks working up to 3x30 before I start SSBII. IDK if my FTP is really going up at all but I’ve never been very good at holding a decent power for longer durations, and this is certainly fixing that.
I’m working on the same premise over winter - focus on Sweet Spot Progression. I’m going to get to use these same workouts but change the “workout intensity” (the % measure in our workouts) to build myself up closer to FTP. So I’ll get to say 3X30 @ 90% and then drop down to 2x20 @ 95%. Its al in the name of getting longer at specific durations and I have approximately three months to play around before I decide what to do in Feb.
Apologies if this has already been answered, but this thread is pretty long now.
Is this the SS progression plan? Or is the plan something else?
I’d like to give it a go.
It is too conservative in my personal opinion, if I could say something. If you are doing 3x30 (90 min TiZ) you could easily do 60 min TiZ at threshold (so more like 4x15, 3x20@97% or at least start with 3x15@97%). But if you want go gently and progress from that - go with that, but training impact will not be significant.
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For me, I know I can 2 x 25 mins @90% without too much struggle to start and only really want to build up to around an hour as none of my races are over 60 mins (and I only care about my races…sad but I never ride ‘for fun’…maybe 2-3 fun rides a year only, everything else either training or races).
Therefore I reckon 6 weeks with 2 SST rides per week and one ‘other’ ride (mix V02, over/unders, longer tempo etc)
Think will do:
Week 1: 2x25 , 3x20
Week 2 3x20, 2x30
Week 3 2x30 1x60
All at 90% … then repeat above for weeks 4-6 at 95%…or maybe push out a bit more to say 3 x 25 or 2x40
I did a couple of weeks of progression, up to 3x20 at 93% and 4x15 at 100%, but it didn’t make any difference to my FTP or TTE. (Might have tested on a bad day, but still). Reckon you actually have to push at least the sweet spot intervals way past an hour TiZ to see any training effect.
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Yes this is the progression @AgingCannon came up with and that we are all excited to try. There is no specific plan with it but many of us commented how we are working it into the base plans.
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I think I posted about my zwift racing stuff above, but I’m done with my 3 week zwift racing “season” and it was interesting to see how I could do 40-60 (and in one case 1hr45min) at sweet spot, having only done the stock TR plans (I had done SSB HV, short power HV, and half of CX specialty this year). My last race on Saturday had me with a 40min power of 280 (95%) and 60mins of 270 (IF 0.92), and some other races had me at 94% for 50mins. Was hoping I’d get like 96+ for IF but I’m happy with the fitness I’m showing and I think folks can accomplish a lot just from doing SSB as prescribed.
Based on what testing protocol?
The training effect of a particular TiZ will vary athlete to athlete. There is no one magic number. For some, 40 min TiZ will spur a training effect. Others might need 90 or more. Lots of factors in play there.
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I did a Kolie Moore-style test before and after the sweet spot block. I was probably a bit tired for the second one, but they were basically identical in outcome.
Agree that obviously TiZ varies, and less work might be enough fir some people, but I would think that 3x20 at 90% FTP is not actually that much for most people. My thinking is that, if you go by the old-style definition of FTP you’d actually want to be able to do 1x60 at 100%, and I’m not sure how you’d get there when training at lower intensity and with breaks for a similar duration.
Maybe it’s just me, but when I looked back at my training block, I thought that I’ll probably have to push the sweet spot intervals past the 1 hour mark to see actual progress.
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